Duke Denies He's Proud Of Klan Years

Republican presidential candidate David Duke has denounced a report in the Dallas Morning News in which he said he was "proud" of his years as a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

"I'm not proud and I repudiate the Klan," Duke told The Washington Post in a telephone interview Friday evening. "I was racist and that was wrong."

Duke said he was "really disgusted and really angry" with the Morning News article, published Friday, because his "quotes had been taken out of context" and his "meaning perverted." He called on the Dallas paper to release a transcript.

Yesterday, the Morning News published a second story that included Duke's response to the original story and a partial transcript of its taped interview.

Asked whether he was proud of the eight years he spent in the Klan, Duke told the Dallas paper: "The things that I accomplished under that motif were pretty substantial."

Later, the transcript shows, he was asked the same question and said: "I'm proud of the fact that there was no violence, and I'm proud of the fact that ... there were many people, many young people who were inclined to be hateful or possibly violent toward people, (who) got a different perspective and gained more moderate and more mainstream in their approach. In that way, I am proud ... ."